place: Prague
year: 2022
area: 25 m2
investor: privat
realization: new building
Sauna is a personal story. It is full of sweat, concentrated contemplation, and cleansing. Designing a sauna and relaxation space for clients that you intimately know and love is a commitment.
Cooperation: Architect Ivo Herman
Supplier: Stavman Praha
The classic suburban area in the Prague district of Slivenec has been the home for a married couple who love saunas for many years. We received a clear task from the clients: the sauna is our oasis of peace, we come here to rest and we do not want to be disturbed. Therefore, we designed a small object that has become a popular private sauna world.
The sauna and its facilities are located in such a way as to create a contrast to the family home at the end of the elongated plot and at the same time some kind of optical barrier against the surrounding development.
The subtle, minimalist house has three parts that are spatially and functionally separated. When we stand in the garden of the house, the wooden beam is clearly readable. In the left part, blood is literally boiling, in the middle, you can look through a huge window into the garden and on the living terrace through the wooden floor, trees are growing. The dark tile on the floor refers to shale, cedar wood, which belongs to traditional sauna materials, is used in the interior.
The sliding wall between the sauna and the relaxation room has two main positions: it either closes the view through the interior window into the sauna or the sauna itself. In front of it, we placed a large cooling sink and the necessary shower. Cooling after sauna was originally intended as some kind of bathtub, solved with stone from used tile, but in the end, we opted for the use of a powerful “jet” that works like a waterfall of cold water. There is also a hand shower and a generous sink available. Thin LED lighting is placed between the horizontal beams on the ceiling, the same lighting then illuminates the interior of the sauna itself. Great emphasis was placed on lighting: most of it is indirect or embedded between the slats of the ceiling cladding.
The minimalist house provides the owners and their guests with various options for spending leisure time, from sauna to summer sitting under the tree crown. It creates a private space closed from the outside world and on the other hand, generously open to the garden.
